[The following editor’s column
by Dwight Murphey was published in the April
1989 issue of Universitas, the
national publication of University Professors for Academic Order.]

“Implications of the Salman Rushdie Fatwa”

Dwight D. Murphey

To most Americans,
the furor that the Ayatollah Khomeini has created over Salman Rushdie’s book The Satanic Verses seems a little bit
like a scene out of a Gilbert and Sullivan comic opera.

The
hilarity is sobered considerably, however, by our awareness that Khomeini’s
death threat is real—and that terror hangs over Rushdie, and potentially over
everyone who will ever dare criticize fanatics of any sort.

Perhaps
this incident can serve a purpose if it causes us to reflect once again on just
why it is that we adhere to an “open society”—and on why so much of mankind has
not and does not.It should cause us,
too, to look at ourselves to see whether we are being faithful to the freedom
our own society represents.

The
polarity between the open society of Athens
and the insularity of Sparta has
appeared again and again in history.The
reemergence of closed systems reflects the fact that the case is not entirely
on the side of the open society.

Closed
cosmologies and closed cultures have a great appeal.To the people encapsulated within them, they
are thought to embrace Truth in a way that openness cannot; and such societies
offer “meaning” and a cultural texture that is thought to offer a “truer”
freedom to individuals than the pursuit of individual purposes can.

At the other pole, those of us who favor an
open society have all sorts of reasons for doing so.One of them is our hope that personal freedom
and the toleration of diverse views will provide the basis for the reconciliation
of mankind, reducing the calamities that have colored so much of human
existence.Those who favor openness see
history as in part a history of tyranny, with abuse following abuse in endless
profusion.

Freedom is
seen, too, as a source of unbounded creativity as energies are allowed free
play to pursue an infinity of ends.In
its economic aspect, freedom protects capital formation and encourages
invention.There is a human meaning to
economic well-being that should not be lost sight of as we come to take for
granted the “conveniences” of a developed economy.

If these
and the other advantages of an open society seem commonplace to us today, we
would do well to look around us and see how greatly we ourselves are tolerating
departures from openness.Challenges
exist right here among us, and the greatest danger comes from the fact that we
must accept them.

Take the
Lee Atwater case.After he accepted a
seat on the Howard University Board of Trustees, a reported 2,000 students
“peacefully” seized the university’s administration building, and howled for
his resignation.

As he
resigned, Atwater said that “I
would never forgive myself if someone was hurt in one of these episodes.”No doubt that’s a humane sentiment, but we
are blind if we don’t see that the ultimate victory went to those whose seizure
of property and implicit threat of violence denied Atwater
and HowardUniversity
their rights.The totalitarians won.

As this is
written, Oliver North is on trial, and most Americans don’t seem greatly
bothered.Most people seem unable to see
how greatly a major truth—that the Rule of Law should “follow its course”—is
being abused in his case.But if it is
an iron rule that “the law should follow its course” in every case, why is
there not a hue-and-cry, in Congress and elsewhere, for the criminal
prosecution of the 2,000 who seized the HowardUniversity administration
building?There is a federal statute (18
USC 241) that provides for up to ten years’
imprisonment “if two or more people conspire to… intimidate any citizen in the
free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege secured to him by the
Constitution….”

Another example occurred recently with the
Detroit Symphony Orchestra.It was
reported on March 9 that several state legislators in Michigan
held up almost $1.3 million in state assistance, demanding that the orchestra
hire more black musicians.

As a
consequence, the New York Times News Service reported, “the financially
troubled orchestra recently waived its stringent audition requirement” and
hired a bass player who until then had been qualified only as a substitute.

Americans
have become quite accepting toward coercive methods if they are used for
egalitarian ends.What we don’t
understand is precisely that all
totalitarians do what they do because they are convinced there is a good
cause.

[Note in 2007:
The final sentence makes, in my present opinion, too broad a
generalization.Genuine belief in a good
cause is no doubt important to the popular following within a totalitarian
regime (enhanced by terror, which in many cases vitiates the genuineness of the
belief).But I have just finished
reading Jung Chang’s Mao: The Unknown
Story, which presents a convincing account of how some totalitarians are
just plain thugs, dominating as gangsters do.]